What is IBM Tivoli Software? We know you want the short version. Steven Wright of Tivoli Software breaks it all down for us in less than 7 minutes on a white grease board. Check it out while you have your morning coffee, afternoon tea, or while you get your miles in on the treadmill or trail with your smart phone. Then visit ibm.com/software/tivoli for more details on how IBM Tivoli Software can help you run a smarter business. .

I have some big news to share. You thought world tours were only reserved for the Stones, Springsteen and other big-name acts? Well, I guess service management has hit the big time, because the IBM Service Management World Tour kicks off in mid-August with gigs across the U.S., Europe and Asia.

I think this is a perfect follow-on to Pulse a merry band of IBM experts comes to a town near you (hopefully) and delivers in-depth presentations on the latest IBM solutions and approaches in service management, storage management, enterprise asset management, and System z. Its a series of hard-hitting one-day events held in smaller settings where you can get some serious face-to-face time with service management gurus. Im helping one such expert with his presentations on the Tivoli Service Management Center for z and consolidating Linux workloads on z (no snappy title yet), and Im impressed with his focus and clarity.Even I get it!By the way, if you missed my profile, thats what I do, write presentations, podcasts and website stories for Tivoli.

Anyway, the tour begins in Boston on August 12, with events in 13 more US cities; the Europe and Asia schedules are being finalized now. You can check out what we have so far and even register for the road show at the World Tour page. You can always ping your favorite IBM sales rep, who is sitting by his/her laptop yearning to hear from you, or ping me, Bob Pickard. In any event, I'll be blogging new news on the tour as it comes along. Party on, Garth.

Earlier today, IBM shared its point of view on the future of the data center with Smarter Computing V3 (press release). A central focus is IBM Enterprise Systems (zEnterprise EC12 and Power) and their ability to deliver exceptional value through a private Cloud. We've seen how organizations have been able to leverage IBM Enterprise Systems to achieve significant benefits. Take the City of Honolulu for example which was able to lower its licensing costs by 68% while increasing tax revenue by $1.4M USD in just three months.

By adding Tivoli software to their current IT environment, organizations can advance their enterprise-class Cloud environment while protecting their existing IT investment. How? IBM SmartCloud Foundation software is deeply rooted in openess - an open standards approach and common management tools that are platform agnostic. Essentially, you pick the platform(s) that best meets your business goals and we deliver a set of interoperable Cloud management tools across your heterogeneous environment. Of course, there are intrinsic benefits to building a Cloud management stack on top of IBM Enterprise Systems given the tight integration between hardware and software. OMEGAMON for example leverages a deep integration with zEnterprise systems to deliver advanced monitoring that reduces typical time to resolution from 90 minutes to 2 minutes.

Whether your starting to consider virtualizing your IT environment or deep into your Cloud journey, we have open Cloud management tools that help you expand your Cloud footprint without fear of vendor "lock-in". Learn more about the latest announcement and our Cloud solutions by visiting this site and attending the System z webcast on October 17.

Just in case you weren't sold on IBM's commitment to better serve and team with smaller enterprises, here is some hard hitting evidence for you. IBM recently launched the Small and Midsized Business (SMB) web portal around Cloud & Smarter Infrastructure as a clear illustration of how the Tivoli, Maximo, TRIRIGA and Netcool solutions are geared for the SMB space across Cloud, Mobility, Asset Management and Storage.

We fully recognize that SMB customers have different sets of needs and IT requirements than our large enterprise customers . And just to be clear, these are NOT watered-down, leftover, or recycled enterprise level products. Instead, the portal features a portfolio of easy to deploy, rapid-value solutions that are appropriately sized and priced for SMB's.

For example, our new cloud provisioning product includes a "try & buy" feature that allows you to quickly download a free trial. SmartCloud Provisioning delivers computer infrastructure as a service by providing on-demand access to virtual machines and storage in the network. The trial is fully functional for 90 days at no charge, and at the end of the trial period, you can purchase the products directly from the site with just a few clicks.

And if you are interested in interacting with a community for this product, you can visit our developerWorks site for discussion forum for the IBM SmartCloud Provisioning Open Beta Program

The new SMB portal also links to a free trial download of Tivoli Endpoint Manager, so you can experience its capabilities and benefits firsthand. This trial has all features enabled and is good for an evaluation period of 30 days.

As the Western Hemisphere was slumbering, news from Singapore was lighting up Twitter as our senior executives took the stage at the IBM InterConnect conference to talk about some of the latest announcements from the IBM corporation on innovation and a Smarter Planet.

Much of the reporting has been done on Twitter (hashtag #IBMInterConnect) and these keynotes are available on the LiveStream including an amazing speech by Dr. Michio Kaku about the future of computers ("everywhere and nowhere").*

These are supplemented by interviews conducted by Todd "Turbo Todd" Watson, also on the LiveStream.

Since this event was focused on a Smarter Planet (the entire IBM portfolio), we covered a lot of ground. Big Data. Social. Mobility. And, of course, cloud.

For SmartCloud Foundation, the Tivoli organization has a number of exciting solutions that are designed to help you increase the levels of innovation you provide to your clients.

For this blog, I thought it'd be good to focus on three of the new solutions you might not have seen before that are going to help you in building out your private cloud.

IBM SmartCloud Cost Management is one of the key components in transforming IT from a "cost center" to an innovation center by providing levels of visibility, and transparency, to the IT costs associated with your cloud. Measure, analyze, report, and invoice the utilization and costs of physical, virtualized, and cloud computing resources, storage and network resources, applications, and other non-IT cost drivers.

IBM SmartCloud Patch Management combines the benefits of two solutions, IBM Endpoint Manager for Patch Management and IBM SmartCloud Provisioning, to provide an effective entry point that delivers lower costs and improves the visibility and control of physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

Finally, the IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center is a solution that you might have seen us talk about at Pulse 2012 and it's now an exciting addition to the portfolio. This solution helps IT storage managers migrate to an agile cloud-based storage environment and manage it effectively without having to replace existing storage systems. If you're looking to increase your storage efficiency in cloud, but don't have the checkbook to do a "rip and replace" of your entire infrastructure, you need to be looking at this solution.

There's more going on in Singapore over the next two days, and more discussion of SmartCloud Foundation and IBM Smarter Planet. Stay tuned to Twitter and the LiveStream and feel free to post comments below.

* I have to confess that this blog was delayed because I got sucked into watching the keynotes.

When IBM first kicked off the Dynamic Infrastructure announcement at Pulse 2009 conference, we heard some rumblings on whether Dynamic Infrastructure was just another executive buzzword or if there was real meat behind "the concept."

Doug McClure summarized the feeling well in his blog: “While this is great for executive level folks, I think we needed to drive this message into consumable and actionable things that lower level technical attendees could take back to their companies. They may be the ones who need to execute and show how previous or planned investments could help their company become smarter and more dynamic.”

After IBM’s announcement yesterday on new Dynamic Infrastructure offerings, critics will be hard-pressed to wonder whether Dynamic Infrastructure is actionable.Not only did IBM announce new products and services in the areas of Information Infrastructure, Virtualization, Service Management, and Energy Efficiency, but they also demonstrated how these solutions are helping three of our clients--the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation, Tricon Geophysics and the United States Bowling Congress--build new, more dynamic infrastructures to help reduce costs, improve service and manage risk.

A key piece of the announcement is the IBM Service Management Center for Cloud Computing, which now includes new IBM Tivoli Identity and Access Assurance, IBM Tivoli Data and Application Security, and IBM Tivoli Security Management for z/OS, for Cloud environments. I don’t know about you, but all that’s more meat than this vegetarian can handle. :)

To continue driving home the Dynamic Infrastructure success, IBM is sponsoring a variety of events for the public to learn more. Register for a free, local Pulse Comes to You event to see how Service Management is a key component for enabling a DyanmicInfrastructure for a Smarter Planet.

That was a cheap ploy for me to work in a comment about how excited I am that Austin is well on it's way to getting a Formula 1 track (Statesman).

Shameless? Or brilliant? You make the call

Anyhow, the title is a pun on the Random Access Compression Engine™ (RACE) architecture that is a part of the Storwize offering that IBM recently acquired.

I want to welcome all the Storwize employees to IBM (hello!) and let our customers know that this is some pretty tight technology and it's worth reaching out to your IBM sales rep or business partner to learn more about it.

In short:

Storwize provides real-time data compression technology to help clients reduce physical storage requirements by up to 80%*, which improves efficiency and lowers the cost of making data available for analytics and other applications.

Here are three good links for more details on the aquisition as well as a quick video featuring Doug Balog, Vice President of IBM Storage.

Recent IBM news on “Smarter Cities” is invoking fond
memories of one of my favorite courses at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute: Politics
of design taught by Professor
Langdon Winner. Some of my favorite discussions during this course focused
on urban theory and planning and environmentally and ethically responsible
innovations. A few of my favorite personal readings included:

While innovations and technologies always fascinate
me, personally I’m most interested in the political, socio-cultural aspects of
Palmisano’s statement below:

“All the ways in which the world
works come together in our cities. They are the proverbial melting pot -- not
only for immigrants, but for systems, blending them together to engender new
forms of commerce, of culture, of science, of life and of society. Which is why
cities -- more than states, provinces or even nations -- are likely to be the
crucible for human progress and evolution in the coming century.”

Smart cities require smart people and deliberate thinking. How will SmarterCity designs and innovations enable and constrain our attempts
to build ethical, sustainable, humane systems and relationships? What are key
philosophical and socio-cultural issues to consider in this endeavor?

Over 51 million tourists travel to Orlando, Florida every year, but only the cool ones go to attend IBM Edge and IBM Innovate.

As I type this, so many of our customers, partners and my colleagues are in the "brutal" 88°F* weather learning more about storage and software & system innovation.

IBM Storage

Since much of my focus is around product announcements, I wanted to point folks to the IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.1 announcement that happened yesterday (Announcement Letter 212-189).

For content coming from the conference, a number of the marketing team are on the ground at Edge and tweeting. Be sure to follow Maria, Martha and Branavan (and of course, @ibmstorage) as well as the hashtag #ibmedge.

IBM Innovate

The Rational team have a number of exciting new announcements around Jazz and they will be talking quite a bit about mobile, cloud, industry solutions and a few other things including DevOps.

For us service management folks, DevOps translates into tangible benefits we can bring back to the business; like fewer errors and faster time to resolving errors if they do occur.

Back at Pulse 2012, we announced, among other things, the Beta for IBM SmartCloud Continuous Delivery (see the blog post and press release).

Along with IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and IBM SmartCloud Provisioning Manager (among others), it's about developers and testers having access to the same tools, data and information that operations uses and leveraging them to fix problems before they occur. And if problems do occur, the linkages with tools like Rational Application Developer and Rational Performance Tester allow the developers and testers to quickly resolve these issues as everyone and everything is connected.

As stated before, fewer errors and faster time to resolving errors if they do occur. This translates into using time to be productive and being innovative. Innovation is what provides value back to the business.

Going to Pulse? Here's your chance to ensure you get the information you want and need!

IBM is hosting a one hour panel, "Tales from the Cutting Edge of Service Management," with IBM customer panelists at Pulse. Tell us which of the questions below would you like us to ask the panel the most? Are there any topics we missed?

Green

·What are you doing to have a more energy efficient data center?

·How have you determined your energy usage and what your energy management goals should be?

Virtualization / Cloud

·How are you managing the different business services and IT environments across a virtualized environment?

·How do you monitor all the different business services and IT components across a virtualized environment?

·How do you think Cloud Computing will affect your business?

Service-oriented architecture (SOA)

·How have you set up a SOA environment?

·Sixty-three percent of clients expect SOA application to impact their service management investment.

·What is your company doing to extend into that environment?

·How have you set up a SOA environment?

·Sixty-three percent of clients expect SOA application to impact their service management investment.

·What is your company doing to extend into that environment?

·How have you set up a SOA environment?

·Sixty-three percent of clients expect SOA application to impact their service management investment.

·What is your company doing to extend into that environment?

ITIL

·What benefits have you experienced in applying the ITIL framework in your organization?

Storage

·What steps are you taking to manage and store the proliferation of data?

·How do you ensure that the data your business runs on is where you need it and properly archived for accessibility and compliance?

·What steps are you taking to manage and store the proliferation of data?

·How do you ensure that the data your business runs on is where you need it and properly archived for accessibility and compliance?

Security

·How are you managing access control and security of your business critical systems?

·What are you doing to address data security?

Implementation of Service Management

·What has been your company's key challenge in implementing Service Management and how did you overcome it?

·Once I’m ready to make that leap and say, okay, let’s start down the path to Service Management, what should I plan to spend to do that?

·Do you see more value for implementing Service Management in any specific area of the business or is it consistent across the board?

·How did you develop your implementation strategy for Service Management?

·How was your implementation of Service Management particular to your industry?

·Could you talk about why a company might be inclined to start a Service Management initiative now rather than later?

Future of Service Management

·What changes do you see ahead for Service Management?If so, how?

Metrics

·What are the top key performance indicators against which you measure IT Operations success? for example: service uptime, improvement in MTTR, reduction in customer calls/incidents, SLAs with lines of business, internal SLAs, customer experience, etc

·What Service Level Management Metrics help to enable corporate governance?

Business Value of IT

·Do do you track IT costs per service?Is this information used for service planning/justification and/or chargeback of related costs to the lines of business?

·How does Service Management help your company to minimize the functional processes of technology and instead focus on how IT contributes to your core business?

·How do you ensure that your IT and business objectives are aligned?

·Do do you track IT costs per service?Is this information used for service planning/justification and/or chargeback of related costs to the lines of business?

Asset Management

·Have you seen an increase in asset up time as a result of your asset management implementation?

·What measures have you taken to ensure that your company's physical and IT assets are managed optimally, in a way that reflects business goals and strategies?

Benefits of Service Management

·How does Service management help your company achieve and maintain significant distinction in an ultra-competitive marketplace?

·How does Service Management help you to attract new customers, measure and increase the satisfaction level of customers you have?

·What benefits have you seen from using Service Management?

·How does Service management help your company achieve and maintain significant distinction in an ultra-competitive marketplace?

·How does Service Management help you to attract new customers, measure and increase the satisfaction level of customers you have?

If you are friends of Tivoli experts on Twitter, you may see #tivtour tweets quite a bit this week. See my recent write up on this topic to learn more about the mystery event. Also, see Twitter Search for #tivtour on Twazzup
for a running stream of related tweets and photos. The Tivoli Tour runs
at many IBM locations this week and in Brazil on May 29. So you can
expect to see more Twitter conversations in the near future.